Family confirms missing marine

2004-06-28 06:54

Salt Lake City, Utah - A family on Sunday confirmed that their relative is the missing US marine threatened with beheading in a militant videotape.

US officials in Iraq said Wassef Ali Hassoun had been missing for nearly a week but it was not clear whether he was being held hostage.

"We accept destiny with its good and bad," Hassoun family friend and spokesperson Tarek Nosseir said in a brief statement to reporters. "We pray and plead for his safe release."

Arab satellite television network al-Jazeera broadcast a videotape purportedly of a marine taken hostage by a militant group threatening to behead him if the US military did not release all prisoners in Iraq.

The tape showed a blindfolded, moustached man and displayed a marine identification card in the name of Wassef Ali Hassoun. Al-Jazeera said he was of Pakistani origin.

- SAPA